I Caved

I got a 'Halloween Tree'. I told myself I didn't need one. It was just a thing to take up space and make you buy ornaments to put on it. It was too kitschy and Christmas is for trees.

Yesterday I gave in and headed out and cut myself down a nice creepy looking branch. Skills with a hacksaw, I has them. I ripped off the leaves that had only just started to grow (what with it being spring and all), and clipped off any branches that didn't fit the aesthetic. Then I spray painted the whole thing a nice matte black. As well as my hands and left pant leg. Skills with spraypaint, I do not have.

I decided that if I was going to have a Halloween tree I wasn't going to subject anyone else to my nonsense, and that it was going to go in my room. Right now the branches hang over my bed-head. It's a pretty neat set-up. I couldn't resist taking a photo of it in the hall though. How can you say no to orange and black?


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Now playing: Flyleaf - What's This?
via FoxyTunes

Idol Worship: One Pretty Thing

Before I start, I think I should mention that One Pretty Thing isn't really a Halloween site. It's actuallykindareally a craft site. You know, craft. Things like knitting and sewing and making jewellery. I happen to follow it quite religiously, because somehow I am Suzy Homemaker at heart.
And if you're not, just stick with me here. It's worth it. There's cake.

One Pretty Thing is run by Rachel (and her cat, Lil' B). Rachel scours the internet looking for tutorials, and every weekday she posts at least one roundup of them. Some days feature themed roundups, and that's why we're here. A few weeks ago heralded the return of Halloween Roundups.
You can search for the Halloween Roundups by using the Catagories button at the top of the site. You can choose between Halloween Roundups, Halloween Food and Drink Roundups and Pumpkin Roundups.
Rachel also posts gift-guide roundups around Christmas, my favourite of which being the Gifts for Geeks. Binary Scarf, anyone?



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Now playing: Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country
via FoxyTunes

Stealing From The Past

Old photos are awesome. I, personally, have a thing for pictures of train wrecks back in the days of steam-powered trains. If you search youtube hard enough you'll find a video of a series of train wreck photos set to an instrumental guitar track. It may or may not be mine. -cough-
But back to topic. Searching flickr a few days ago I came across the Powerhouse Museum photo sets. The Powerhouse Museum is an Australian museum, meaning it's not really that old and there's not that much history, speaking from an apathetic history student's point of view. They do however, have a lot of really nice black and white photos. Like the skeleton above.
All their images (so far as I can tell) have no known copyrights, which is handy, and have incredibly wonderful quality. Take the time to look through the sets, especially the thematic groupings. There be collections of photos of ships, costumes, caves, and my personal favourite, railway, among others.

But to the reason I was looking for old black and white photos to begin with. As this year's Halloween party is a split operation between my friends and I, we wanted to create a photo of us in an the style of these old photos. An imitation, one might say. It's not going to be something that everyone will notice, just a photo sitting on a shelf with three girls who look quite a bit like the people at the party.

So go check them out. Idol Worship returns tomorrow. (I've decided to space out my fan-girling with a vague attempt at normalcy).

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Now playing: The Matches - Between Halloweens
via FoxyTunes

Idol Worship: Dave Lowe

Dave does stuff. Lots of stuff. It's all really cool and I'd like to steal his brain.

But to put that in less creepy "I keep a lock of your hair under my pillow" terms, Dave is one talented fellow. He's a prop-maker. An illustrator. He works for Nickelodeon. Does set design. But most importantly (not really, but kid-me thinks so), Dave draws cartoons.
Darwin's theory of evolution of candy-corn, anyone? How about the Loch Ness monster in a bar? Home DIY for the serial killer? Pick up lines for brains in jars? Or my personal favourite running gag, the white-creature-in-a-snow-storm?
His blog features how-tos on many, many different haunt-related tips and tricks. Last Halloween's giant eyeball in the window is one I've been dying to replicate for awhile now.
Dave's niece Devin has cameo appearances in blog posts, and she makes me jealous that I haven't got an uncle as cool as Mr. Lowe.

Just as a side note: I feel the need to confess something. I don't actually know what candy corn tastes like. I've seen pictures. I've heard stories. But I've yet to view the rare beast in real life. Now you know. Don't judge me.

So I hear it's October?

The news has me bouncing up and down like a small child.
October. October. OCTOBER!
Granted I'm not really that far past small-childdom, but the excitement of it being October has further increased my childishness.

I had hoped to do a score of Halloween related posts starting the first of the month, but that was thrown by the wayside due to my running off to the seaside for a fortnight. There was no computer. I know, I was scared too.
So after coming home to see 490 unread posts in my site reader, I have decided that I'm going to feature a series of blog posts about my favourite haunters who blog. And people who don't haunt but have neat blogs. And people who dabble in a bit of everything.

Basically I'm going to go through all the blog posts I read obsessively and talk about why they're worth reading. Idol-worship at it's best. I might even make sense some of the time.

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Now playing: Panic At The Disco - It's Almost Halloween
via FoxyTunes

Page Four.

The 'That Night,' series is now complete. Check it out here.

Poker.

The Effort/Worth Scale

A friend and I came up with the Effort/Worth scale while sitting in a train waiting for it to leave the station. We'd just travelled around two hours on the train to the city just to go shopping, and we were debating whether or not the result was worth the effort it took to get there. Effectively we've created a scale to measure laziness, but that wasn't our intention. Honest.

The hardest part is determining where on the scale the effort and worth should be.